DragonFaerie Posted July 4, 2011 Share Posted July 4, 2011 Last year we did 4-day school weeks and we really liked it. We only did school on Fridays if someone didn't finish their work during the rest of the week. Occasionally, we would take a different day off and make it up on Friday instead. The flexibility of the shorter week was great! I'd like to do the same thing this year but I'm having some problems figuring out the schedule. The biggest problem is that the kids are doing several curriculums that are already planned into 5-day weeks (WWW, Evan-Moor Daily Handwriting Practice, VfCR, WW, etc.). I could just have them double up one day each week but that brings us to the next problem. As they are moving on in school, they are doing more and more work and I'm already concerned that they may be overloaded. I'd hate to start making them double up work on an already full schedule. I'm thinking we're going to have to do school all five days (I can do this and keep Fridays light but I'd love to come up with a way to avoid that). So, how would you guys handle this? Any suggestions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abacus2 Posted July 4, 2011 Share Posted July 4, 2011 You could deliberately skip one day each week in five day curricula, choosing the one that seems least valuable. You could also skip a chapter or take more than a year to finish the work, just startingthe next level when ready even if it is a month or two into the next year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
warneral Posted July 4, 2011 Share Posted July 4, 2011 I am looking forward to Winning With Writing but wasn't too thrilled that it is 5days/week. It looks like we should be able to double up a day or two per week without it being too daunting. I really want to start homeschooling with the flexibility of a 4 day per week schedule so I plan on doing what I can to get it all done in 4 days :) For WW (do you mean wordly wise?) - there are only 15 lessons per book so I plan to do about 3 days per week and take 2 weeks per lesson. Handwriting I am only going to do 3 days a week with my kiddos (that should be plenty). The only thing I plan to cram is the WWW and I also think that if we had a 20min writing excercise to do on Friday, that wouldn't be too bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jer2911mom Posted July 4, 2011 Share Posted July 4, 2011 One thing to keep in mind -- just because something is scheduled for 5 days does not mean it has to be done in the same week. We did HOD's LHFHG last year, which is scheduled for 5 days, and I always just did the next day, no matter what day of the week it was. So, if we didn't have school on Friday one week, we did day 5 on the following Monday, then day 1 of the next week on Tuesday, etc. With holidays and such, 5 day weeks are always being thrown off. We still have to have 180 days, no matter how many days a week we do school, so we just keep moving forward with the next day in the curriculum. Maybe it would help if you remove the day of the week and just number the days on the schedules? Kathy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonFaerie Posted July 4, 2011 Author Share Posted July 4, 2011 Yes, WW is Wordly Wise. However, I am alternating WW with VfCr so she will have 30+ weeks of lessons. But, VfCR doesn't have 5-day lessons. At this point, I have Fridays being very light. I'm just hoping to find a way to have them off altogether. I don't know if the uber-organized side of me would allow me to deliberately skip parts of lessons, though. *sigh* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonFaerie Posted July 4, 2011 Author Share Posted July 4, 2011 One thing to keep in mind -- just because something is scheduled for 5 days does not mean it has to be done in the same week. We did HOD's LHFHG last year, which is scheduled for 5 days, and I always just did the next day, no matter what day of the week it was. So, if we didn't have school on Friday one week, we did day 5 on the following Monday, then day 1 of the next week on Tuesday, etc. With holidays and such, 5 day weeks are always being thrown off. We still have to have 180 days, no matter how many days a week we do school, so we just keep moving forward with the next day in the curriculum. Maybe it would help if you remove the day of the week and just number the days on the schedules? Kathy That's a good idea. Was it not strange to finish a lesson on Monday, though? No problems with the weekend in the middle of things? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jer2911mom Posted July 4, 2011 Share Posted July 4, 2011 That's a good idea. Was it not strange to finish a lesson on Monday, though? No problems with the weekend in the middle of things? No problem for us. Actually, it made her remember her bible verse and other things over the weekend, which was a plus. Our schedule was constantly rotating with field trips, holidays, and vacations, and I quickly realized it would have been very difficult to stay on a true 5 day a week schedule. Rotating through released a lot of stress from that standpoint. It was just a mentality of "do the next thing". I used it with Memoria Press K (our supplement), too, and there were no issues there. I think it actually brought continuity to things. We never saw things as just a week of learning this or a week of learning that. HTH! Kathy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonFaerie Posted July 4, 2011 Author Share Posted July 4, 2011 No problem for us. Actually, it made her remember her bible verse and other things over the weekend, which was a plus. Our schedule was constantly rotating with field trips, holidays, and vacations, and I quickly realized it would have been very difficult to stay on a true 5 day a week schedule. Rotating through released a lot of stress from that standpoint. It was just a mentality of "do the next thing". I used it with Memoria Press K (our supplement), too, and there were no issues there. I think it actually brought continuity to things. We never saw things as just a week of learning this or a week of learning that. HTH! Kathy Thanks. I may give that a try. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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